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Copyright X°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Christian Program 



The Christian Program 



By 
EDWARD P. DENNETT 



* 



CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEWYORK: EATON AND MAINS 



\ ww Creoles Received 

SEP 12 !90f 

Cooyntftt Brtry 

CUS6 v4 XXC, N 

COPY B. 



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Copyright, 1907, 
By Jennings and Graham 



CONTENTS 

Page 

I. Creed and Life, ... 9 

II. Methodism, ------ 11 

III. The General Rules, - - - - 16 

IV. The Harmless Life, - 19 
V. The Unworldly Life, - - - -23 

VI. The Human Life, . - - 26 

VII. The Aggressive Life, - - - - 28 

VIII. The Devout Life, - - - - 31 

IX. The Adequacy of This Program, - - 34 



The Christian Program 



I. 

Creed and Life. 

THE religious man is continually asking two 
questions. The first is, What kind of a world 
am I living in ? the second, What kind of a life 
shall I live? To these he is impelled by an instinct as 
deep as the soul and as wide as the race. This instinct 
assures him that the world of clod and cloud, of matter 
and motion, which his senses reveal is not the only 
world or the real world, and that life is more than the 
satisfaction of his bodily appetites and the exercise of 
his bodily powers. Hence come these questions about 
the world and life. 

The answer to the first question he gives in his creed. 
This may be anything, the baldest materialism, the 
most seductive pantheism, or the most reverent Chris- 
tian Theism. It will yet be his creed because it 
answers the first question. It might seem consistent 
to say that the answer to the second question is his 
system of ethics. But for the purpose of life, systems 
of ethics are too abstract, too unreal, too extended, and 
therefore they find their place in dry volumes on library 
shelves and not in human lives. It will be more cor- 
rect to say that he answers the second question in his 
program of life. 

9 



io The Christian Program. 

A life program will differ from a system of ethics in 
being briefer, more concrete, and more vital. It will, 
however, not consist in a set of rules for action, be- 
cause it must go deeper than rules can go and seek 
to reach those motives, impulses, and inner experiences 
which lie at the root of Character, for these must be 
reached if conduct is to be free and spontaneous, as 
well as strong and consistent. 

A program of life will consist of a few fundamental 
and self-evident principles which lay hold of the inner 
life and present the ideals which the soul seeks to 
reach. 

This is an attempt to give a bird's-eye view of one 
of the great world ideals of the Christian program of life. 
A bird's-eye view, while it has its limitations, has yet 
the advantage of showing a whole subject in its connec- 
tions and interrelations. It leaves oftentimes a clear- 
ness and unity of conception which would be lacking in 
a more comprehensive and detailed treatment of the 
subject. 



II. 
Methodism. 

THE Methodist movement was one of those great 
Christian revivals which have occurred at inter- 
vals every few centuries since the Apostolic era. 
Humble in origin, pentecostal in manifestation, it, as 
all the rest, put new life into old forms and developed 
new forms where old ones were inefficient. Its influ- 
ence outran the limited circle of Wesley's followers, 
and was felt in every religious body among English- 
speaking peoples, and in almost all reform and philan- 
thropic circles. The Methodist movement was one of 
the epochs of Church history. 

Now the product of this movement was not essen- 
tially a creed. It had no new light to throw on dog- 
matics. It took Arminian theology as it found it, and 
used it without serious change as a weapon of offense 
against sin and error. But while Methodism is not 
essentially a creed, the evangelical creed was essential 
to Methodism. Wesley saw that the two great ques- 
tions of religion must be answered together The 
creed you believe will determine the life you ought to 
live. You no sooner say, " There is a personal God," 
than Conscience says, ** Prepare to meet thy God." If 
you start with the other question and say, " You must 

ii 



12 The Christian Program. 

live a holy life," at once comes the query, "Why must 
I and how can I ?" and your Theistic creed is the only 
adequate reason or support for such a life. An ortho- 
dox life will not long survive the death of an orthodox 
creed. An orthodox creed will not retain its hold on 
the mind of one who ceases to live a pure and un- 
worldly life. The pantheist will not long live the The- 
istic life, nor the rejecter of Christ live the Christian 
life. On creed and program the soul mounts up to 
God as on his two wings the eagle soars sunward. So 
while the characteristic product of Methodism was not 
a creed, the evangelical creed was an essential part of 
Methodism. 

Nor is Methodism esentially a great group of de- 
nominations. These have vindicated their right to exist 
by their history. The millions of men and women who 
have found God at their altars show that the Divine 
approval was with them. They need no other vindica- 
tion. If is probably true that as the world is, they 
were essential to the continued existence of the larger 
Methodism of which we shall speak later, and that this 
Methodism might have perished had it not had these 
great organizations as its particular champions. Yet 
they were not the essential result, but strong as they 
are were only by-products of the great movement. 

If Methodism were simply a denomination however 
great, its writings would have a claim on the attention 
only of its members and a few students of Church his- 
tory. A twentieth-century man whose eyes had caught 
a glimpse of the Kingdom of God as something greater 
than any existfng Christian body, could hardly become 



Methodism. 13 

its enthusiastic and particular advocate. This would 
be true, however great might be its claims to exclusive 
validity, for the more loudly any body of Christians 
claims to be the Church besides which there is no other 
true Church, or Christians par excellence, the more sec- 
tarian is its spirit, the more divisive its influence, 
and the further it delays the reunion of Christendom. 

The essential product of Methodism was a great 
world ideal of the Christian program. There are sev- 
eral hundred denominations ; there are several score of 
creeds. There are very few statements of the Christian 
program that by their universal sympathy, their ele- 
mental humanness, and the success of their appeal to 
various races, deserve to be called world ideals. One 
of the few is Methodism, and this, and not its creed nor 
its denominations, was the essential product of the 
movement. 

A denomination can have authority only for the few 
who voluntarily join. A life program depends for its 
authority on its truth and righteousness. It is valid 
for all men, whether or not they consent. The fact 
that the great revival was the occasion for the restate- 
ment and earnest championship of this program is only 
of historic interest. Its claim on the attention of men 
must depend ultimately on its harmony with the teach- 
ings of Jesus. If it is true to these it will demand the 
obedience of men, and not otherwise. 

We may briefly summarize the few attempts to 
formulate the Christian program which deserve the 
name of world ideals. First among them comes the 
Roman Catholic, which claims to be ever, always, and 



14 The Christian Program. 

everywhere the same. This affirms that Christian life 
consists in obedience to the Church as it expresses 
itself through its proper officers, priest, bishop, and 
pope. To this obedience it subordinates creed, con- 
duct, experience, and all else. If you obey without hes- 
itation you are a good Catholic, which means a good 
Christian. If you hesitate or refuse, however conscien- 
tious you may be, you are not a Christian, whatever be 
your life, creed, or experience. In spite of occasional 
differing statements by individual priests, this is a fair 
statement of the Catholic ideal. 

The ritualistic ideal is that the Christian life finds 
expression in ritual and the sacraments. Whoso has 
properly received the sacrament of baptism, and con- 
tinues to receive the Holy Communion, is performing 
those acts which essentially characterize a Christian 
life. In its extremest form this conception is confined 
to a few high churchmen of different bodies. 

At the opposite pole from this is the ideal of liberal 
Christianity. Life is not a matter of ritual, creed, nor 
Church, but of conduct. Whoso acts right is a Chris- 
tian, whatever may be his ideas about God, Christ, or 
the Church. 

The orthodox idea is not; carefully formulated nor 
consistently held, yet it is a real working ideal of mil- 
lions. Christian life consists in the acceptance of an 
orthodox creed, which acceptance connects the soul 
vitally with God. Whoso believes is a Christian, and a 
very wide latitude in conduct must be given him. 
Whoso does not believe is not a Christian, whatever 
may be his conduct. 



Methodism. 15 

In harmony at some points with all of these, yet 
differing from them all, is the Methodist ideal. Believ- 
ing in a strong organization as does the Roman Catho- 
lic, it does not teach that loyalty to this is an accurate 
test of Christian life. Valuing the sacraments as does 
the ritualist, it finds in it no magical power. Insist- 
ing on conduct as earnestly as does the liberal, it is 
sure that life is deeper than conduct. Orthodox in 
creed, it yet feels that life is more than believing in a 
creed. So it endeavors to find some great principles 
which embrace all of these, not by way of compromise, 
but in a deep and radical comprehension. 

While the two great questions have always been 
asked together, the first has been more carefully con- 
sidered ; and men have too frequently taken for granted 
a life program they have not deeply pondered. Method- 
ism felt that nothing could be taken for granted. If you 
do not consciously determine right conduct, the wrong 
conduct will get itself smuggled in and recognized in 
good society. It sounds broad and liberal to say, Let 
us leave it all to each man's conscience, but in prac- 
tical life this amounts to leaving each man to do as he 
pleases with very little consideration. 

Methodism believed in an education conscience. Its 
life program was an earnest and thoughtful attempt to 
formulate great principles which should govern an ed- 
ucated conscience. In the testing fires of half a cen- 
tury of the most intense Christian work it gained hu- 
manness, consistency, solidity, and a very close approx- 
imation to the teachings of Jesus. 



III. 
The General Rules. 

A NY document which has had a profound and far- 
Jfes% reaching influence on the lives of men is worthy 
"^" ■** of study. The Magna Charta and the Declara- 
tion of Independence have rightly received frequent 
and reverent consideration. The great creeds of Chris- 
tendom which have affected men not less than these 
have also been worthy of all the thought bestowed on 
them. The documents which set forth these various 
conceptions of Christianity's life program deserve in 
their rank and place a candid thoughtfulness, for they 
also have helped to mold the lives of millions. 

The document which more than any other sets 
forth the ideal we are studying is that containing the 
so-called "General Rules." I am aware that when we 
mention these we stir a deep prejudice which will 
tempt many readers to throw this aside. The General 
Rules are not popular with this generation. To many 
they seem a series of small and annoying regulations, 
irrational to men who believe in the spirit and not in 
the letter, suitable perhaps for some of the uneducated 
early followers of John Wesley, but inappropriate for 

16 



The General Rules. 17 

this age, and kept in place only as a survival which we 
have not the frankness and courage to remove. 

Such a view is careless and hasty, and does injus- 
tice to the real merits of the document. Superficially 
read, it may seem to furnish ground for such an opin- 
ion. Deeply read, one immediately detects that under- 
neath the surface of rules are clear statements of great 
principles of character. 

A rule is an arbitrary regulation by an organization 
to protect its interests. It is founded in the wisdom 
of men who make it. A club makes rules. Rules are 
petty things. A principle is a self-evident law based 
on the constitution of the universe and the nature of 
man. It is so, not because men say so, but because 
God made men so. It is not made to run an organiza- 
tion, but to control a life. Men make rules. God makes 
principles. Men invent rules. They discover prin- 
ciples. Rules are obligatory because men join the 
organization and have authority only on those who do 
join. Principles are valid because you are human and 
live in God's world. The wisdom of a rule is to be 
established by experience. The truth of a principle is 
self-evident. 

When we discover that Methodism is not chiefly a 
denomination, but a great world ideal of the Christian 
program, and that these rules are in reality great prin- 
ciples of self-evident and eternal validity, the reading 
of the General Rules ceases to be an unwelcome and 
annoying task of which we are half ashamed, and we 
feel that we are approaching a document of deep in- 
sight and universal application. What follows is an 



18 The Christian Program. 

attempt to interpret the General Rules in the light of 
this broader idea of Methodism. It finds underneath 
the detailed directions the great principles about which 
we have been writing. These are five in number. The 
Christian program demands a life that shall be harm- 
less, unworldly, humane, aggressive, and devout. 



IV. 

The Harmless Life. 

THE Christian life must be harmless. I must 
injure no one in the pursuit of my livelihood, 
my pleasure, or my ambition. No one must be 
poorer because I am richer, nor unhappier that I may 
be prospered. No one's virtue must be sacrificed to 
minister to my pleasure, nor his welfare to enable me 
to attain the goal of my ambition. This harmlessness 
is both physical and spiritual, for I may not injure 
either body or soul. It is both direct and indirect. I 
may not of set purpose inflict harm, nor may I continue 
my course of action if I discover that it necessarily 
produces harm which I did not intend nor foresee. 
The pagan king who is said to have built his throne on 
eighty thousand human skulls is a type of the man 
who is willing to build his prosperity on the ruin of 
other lives. 

This harmlessness is toward myself as well as 
toward others. I may never harm my higher life to 
attain some lower goal, for that would be sacrificing 
my soul to my body. 

At first sight this ideal may seem a weak and color- 
less thing, partaking of that quality we call goody-goody. 
We often use the word as a term of opprobrium. There 

19 



20 The Christian Program. 

is a certain style of man we all recognize, usually the 
champion of some incidental, weak fad, who is yet 
spineless and characterless, with no fist to smite wrong 
and no inclination to resist injustice, of whom we say 
that he is harmless. A true man can receive few 
direr insults than to be so styled. A little reflection 
will convince us, however, that the real harmlessness 
is not so easily reached that weak-willed folk can at- 
tain it. It is utterly antagonistic to the customs of the 
time, in business and pleasure and politics. 

We are fond of fight and honor the conqueror. We 
give our greatest rewards to the man who can win. 
The big-brained, big-brawned man who brooks no in- 
terference, and will ruthlessly crush down all opposers, 
to him we shout acclaim and give the laurel crown. 
The working creed of the world is, "Do all the harm 
you must in order to get what you want." Is it a mil- 
lion dollars ? Drive to poverty all who stand in your 
way. Is it a new sensation on the stage ? Sacrifice the 
virtue of all you must, in order to get your sensation. 

In face of this practice, it will take no easy goodness 
to live the harmless life. Only the man of a clear 
mind which will not be confused by the sophistries of 
conventionalism, and of a stout purpose which will not 
be beaten down from his high resolve, can in this age 
steadily and sweetly live the harmless life. 

Nor on the other hand is it a mere empty truism, so 
obvious and commonplace as to need no statement. 
For nothing can be called a truism which contradicts 
so fundamentally as does this, not only prevailing 
habits of action but prevailing schools of thought. One 



The Harmless Life. 21 

of our favorite doctrines is that it is through the clash 
of men who are seeking to harm each other that hu- 
manity is advanced and the kingdom comes ; that the 
road to the goal is strewn with bodies of the weak 
ruthlessly crushed by the strong. To which the re- 
sponse is sufficient that to whatever goal such a prac- 
tice may lead, it is not the kingdom of God. So long 
as men continue to harm each other the Kingdom is not 
yet come. So soon as it comes it will be true that 
" they shall not hurt nor devour in all my holy moun- 
tain." The theory of life, which so radically denies 
the dominant theory of the time, however it may be 
described, can not be called a truism. 

Nor is it abstract and unreal. Difficult as it will be 
to apply it, this difficulty lies not in the nature of life, 
but in the habits of men. It is applicable to business, 
though a business system to which it were uniformly 
applied would be widely different from our present sys- 
tem. So also is it applicable to the pursuit of pleasure, 
though the world of professional pleasure giving would 
be a very different world if this principle were carefully 
applied by pleasure seekers. To every sphere of man's 
life this principle is applicable, and the Christian must 
apply it. Good can not be set over against evil as credit 
against debit until so much good cancels so much evil. 
The good a man does can never make up for the harm 
he is habitually doing. No amount of water can put 
out a fire that is being fed with oil. The delusion of 
the age is that philanthropy in giving can make up for 
misanthropy in getting. 

He who purposes to be a real follower of Jesus must 



22 The Christian Program. 

highly resolve that though no great deed of philan- 
thropy may be attributable to him, he will be free from 
the blood of all men. He will not rob nor oppress. 
He will have no tainted money, or tainted pleasure, or 
tainted honors; and if moneyless, pleasureless, and 
honorless he go through life he will not meet impov- 
erished, debauched, and down -trodden souls before the 
great white throne. 



The Unworldly Life. 

NEXT in order among the self-evident principles 
is that of the unworldly life. While this has a 
large place in any truly Christian conception, it 
is not easy to define it in a satisfactory manner. There 
is a false unworldliness which disgusts the sane- 
minded, impoverishes life, and is very apt to result in 
the moral confusion which " strains at a gnat and swal- 
lows a camel." There is, on the other hand, a true 
worldliness which is demanded of that same sane- 
minded Christian, and which is necessary to his use- 
fulness in life. But neither of these can bring in the 
Kingdom of God, and we can find no phrase so nearly 
adequate as the unworldly life to describe Christ's at- 
titude toward nature and man. 

Man has two sides to his nature. There is a lower, 
in virtue of which he is akin to inorganic matter and to 
the animal world ; and a higher by virtue of which he is 
alien to these and akin to God. 

The world has two sides. On its lower it supplies 
man's material needs. On its higher it is a parable 
continually teaching him spiritual lessons, and a road 
on which he may travel to God. 

He lives the worldly life who lives as though man 
23 



24 The Christian Program. 

had no side except his lower, and the world no function 
except its lower one. If the wordly man is fleshly in 
temperament, his life will be given up to gluttony and 
license. If he be frivolous by nature, he will seek those 
titillations of nerve we call pleasure. If he be intellect- 
ual, he will find the world a riddle and the solving of 
it the satisfaction of life. If he be a man of strong will, 
he will have an ambition to subjugate his fellows and 
win their homage. If he be a person of no pronounced 
and dominant temperament, he will float along with the 
current, and his chief effort will be to keep in fashion. 
An organ of social accommodation will usurp the place 
intended for a conscience. But drifter, debauchee, 
pleasure-seeker, intellectualist, or man of ambition, he 
is living a worldly life and missing the true meaning of 
the world and his own nature, and losing his own soul. 
The unworldly man will keep the lower in its place, 
and not allow the body to sit on the throne the soul 
should occupy. He will have his play-time, but this 
will be for rest and health. His pleasure will ever be 
in the divine pursuit. He knows how easy it is to be- 
come self-indulgent, and that self, indulged, is like a 
lion that has tasted blood and roars for more. He sets 
his affections on things above ; that is, on the higher 
purposes of the world, the higher meanings of life, the 
higher destinies of man here and hereafter. He under- 
stands that not only must he turn from sin, but he 
must, whenever necessary, sacrifice the lower to the 
higher, but never the higher to the lower. He keeps 
his body under, not as did Bernard of Clairvaux, by 
starving its functions, but by mastering them until, 



The Unworldly Life. 25 

like well-broken horses, they do the soul's bidding. 
But always and everywhere he knows that he is essen- 
tially a divine spirit to whose intelligence God is re- 
vealed, for whom conscience is the Supreme law, and 
holy love the highest attainment. 

Whatever "dims his spiritual vision, deadens the 
voice of his conscience, and weakens his love for God 
and his fellows ; that, to him, is sin." And whatever 
quickens his conscience, clarifies his spiritual vision, 
makes him more helpful in bringing in the Kingdom ; 
that, for him, is joy and duty. The characteristic 
spirit of worldliness is vanity and frivolity, ambition 
and avarice. The characteristic spirit of unworldliness 
is reverence, aspiration, sincerity, and joy. If the uni- 
verse be spiritual and we be spiritual, then the worldly 
man is like him who built his house on the sand, or 
like him whose barns were full, but whose soul was 
empty. In our time this element of the Christian pro- 
gram needs an emphasis it is not receiving. 



VI. 

The Humane Life. 

THE Christian program must take note of the fact 
that all live in relation with men who are often 
in distress and suffering. His Master, when 
He saw the needs of oppressed humanity, was filled 
with compassion. Two of His greatest parables, that 
of the Good Samaritan, and that of the Sheep and the 
Goats, taught the duty of compassion and the fate of the 
hard-hearted. So His followers must put humaneness 
among the cardinal principles of their life. 

Humaneness is the practical sympathy that tries to 
relieve human suffering. It is two-fold in aspect. The 
first is Charity. This renders individual assistance. It 
clothes the naked, feeds the hungry, assuages pain, and 
visits those sick and in prison. Its aim is to supply 
the immediate needs, and restore the sufferer to a place 
where he can again take his part as a self-respecting, 
productive member of human society. 

Charity does not, however, exhaust the duty of the 
humane life. The wise man soon discovers that while 
much suffering is due to the individual himself, much 
also is owing to social conditions for which the sufferer 
is not responsible and over which he has little control. 
That such suffering can only be stopped by changing 

26 



The Humane Life. 27 

these adverse social conditions. Charity alone can not 
cure preventable pain. 

There is the slum, the sweat-shop, the tenement, 
the saloon. There was slavery. These make the weak 
suffer, and so long as they endure will continue to 
make them suffer. So, then, the humane man will be 
concerned to secure better conditions, and will be an 
earnest advocate of social reform. 

This humaneness will not be an occasional activity 
of his leisure ; it will be one of the steady, controlling 
purposes of his life. He will deem it a sin to be 
counted with the priest and the Levite who passed by 
en the other side and went about their business, leav- 
ing the sufferer bleeding by the wayside. The humane 
life is an essential element of the Christian program. 



VII. 

The Aggressive Life. 

THERE is a type of Christian who keeps person- 
ally clean, who is unworldly and harmless, but 
who is satisfied with his own individual virtue, 
and seems to say to sin, " Let me alone, and I will let 
you alone." He never lifts his hand against evil, 
though he is not evil. This attitude is partially the 
result of inertia, partly from lack of comprehension, 
partly from fear of loss, and hate of the necessary 
fighting. It is not a Christian attitude. 

Jesus said to His followers, ''I send you forth as 
sheep in the midst of wolves;" "I came not to send 
peace, but a sword." He, Himself, entered a world that 
needed Him desperately, but did not welcome Him, and 
finally crucified Him. To live His own life without 
sin would have seemed the monumental achievement 
of all ages. But this, He felt, was the smallest part 
of His work. He launched His truth against man's 
error, His moral ideals against theirs with the terrify- 
ing, "it hath been said by those of old time, but I say 
unto you." He opposed His humanitarianism to their 
inhumanity, His Divine dynamic against their degener- 
ate human impulses. He lived to its full, the aggressive 
life. No one has a real claim to be called His follower 

28 



The Aggressive Life. 29 

who does not live the aggressive life. To be a Chris- 
tian is to join Christ in rescuing the world. 

Aggressive Christians will take two main forms. 
It will first be evangelistic. We are so accustomed to 
associating evangelism with certain well marked forms 
of effort, that at first to say evangelistic will seem to 
mean these alone. But the word is of wider applica ■ 
tion. It includes all effort to win souls to Christ and 
His life. The older revivals, the single-man campaign, 
the institutional Church methods, may all be evangel- 
istic. 

It is obvious that much so-called evangelical Chris- 
tianity is not evangelistic. Booker T. Washington's 
story is in point. The old negro woman had gone into 
the gallery of a fashionable church. The first part of 
the service, with its refined music and its liturgy, did 
not stir her. When the preacher arose he became elo » 
quent and earnest ; her feelings were aroused and she 
began to shout, "Glory to God! Hallelujah!" This 
disturbed the congregation, and an official went to her 
with, " My dear woman, what is the matter ? what is 
the matter?" To this she responded, "Glory to God! 
I 's got religion." His very accurate answer was fuller 
of meaning than he appreciated, " Don't you know that 
this is not the place 'to get religion ? " There are many 
evangelical Churches of which it may be said, "This 
is no place to get religion." Such do not take their re- 
ligion seriously. To them it is a play, or an entertain- 
ment, or a custom of polite society, or a spiritual seda- 
tive, and not the one message of salvation. They are 
not parts of the Church militant, but of the Church som- 



30 The Christian Program. 

nolent. The real Church will be in this broad sense 
aggressively evangelistic. 

It will also be aggressively interested in social re- 
form from the evangelistic standpoint, seeing, as clear- 
eyed, modern Christianity must, that much human sin, 
as well as suffering, is caused, or at least greatly ag- 
gravated, by conditions from which many can not 
completely escape; it will seek to destroy malignant 
conditions, and reform inadequate ones. The partial 
draining of the Roman Campagna did for the health 
conditions what no remedial medical efforts could do; 
so also the sewering of Havana served to stamp out 
yellow fever as no mere doctoring ever had done. In the 
moral realm, the saloon, the brothel, human slavery, 
the sweat-shop, the unregulated trust, are sources of 
evil that aggressive Christianity will attack. That 
which calls itself Christian and does not attack them 
is either blind, or it is not Christian at all. 



VIII. 

The Devout Life. 

NO CHRISTIAN program and no human program 
is complete without this element. Secularism, 
however humanitarian it seeks to be, is a mere 
caricature of life. If God is a living God, the complete 
life must include some relation to Him. Besides this, 
the religious experience is as real as any human ex- 
perience that comes within the purview of man's in- 
tellect, and it is no more mystic than any other ele- 
ment of experience. 

Jacob, on his pillow of stone; Moses, before his 
burning bush ; Isaiah, in his great vision, and Paul, 
dazzled by the light brighter than the desert sun at 
noon -day, all had experiences greater in degree, but 
identical in the abiding sense of the reality of God with 
what millions of humble souls are having each common 
day, and in virtue of which human life continues to be 
worth living, and hope and righteousness never quite 
die out. 

Augustine's "Our souls can not rest until they rest 
in thee;" the Psalmist's "My soul thirsteth for God," 
are utterances of what millions of men feel, but have 
not so well voiced. Man does not come to his own 
until he comes to God. The devout man has a living 

3i 



32 The Christian Program. 

belief, not a tentative theory, but in a living God with 
whom his children may come into conscious relations. 
This relationship is supremely mediated through the 
absolutely unique Divine-human person of Jesus Christ. 
The devout man says in his creed, " I believe in the 
Holy Ghost, " because no other words so truly express 
his experience. He sings : 



and 



" Jesus, the very thought of Thee 
With sweetness fills the breast;" 

"Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
E'en though it be a cross that raiseth me.' 



And all the rich wealth of Christian hymnology 
gives expression to true and deep insights and feelings 
of his soul at its best moments. 

He nourishes his God-hunger by the use of the 
means of grace. In public worship, with its sermon 
and hymn and prayer, and in private devotion, with its 
sacred loneliness, he grows strong. He tests his ex- 
periences in the common moments of life, and finds 
that there, away from the sanctuary, they are still real 
and powerful. In them he finds the inspiration for 
holy living and aggressive striving. 

This is the life which is life indeed. He sees men 
eagerly rushing into secular activities, and he approves 
this. He sees the strong youth contending on the ath- 
letic field, and he says, This is life, but not life indeed. 
He sees mature men throwing every energy into busi- 
ness, and says, This is life, but not life indeed. He sees 
culture and wealth at its ease in social gatherings, and 



The Devout Life. 33 

says, This, too, is life, but not life indeed. He sees the 
scholar in eager pursuit of knowledge, and as his God- 
given curiosity is satisfied and yet stimulated by new 
views of truth, he says, This is life, and then pausing 
for reflection, is forced to add, But not life indeed. He 
goes into circles of art, where music and painting and 
sculpture, under the touch of the master, stir the great 
deep of a man's heart, and he says, This, too, is life, but 
not even is this life indeed. 

Then in some church, in the sermon or hymn or 
prayer, he finds God, or in some dark alley he sees pure 
souls succoring the needy in Christ's name, or in some 
brave battle for truth and justice he sees man and 
woman contending against great odds for the cause of 
God and humanity, or in city slum or foreign mis- 
sion he sees cultured men and women laboring amid 
filth and squalor to lead men to Christ. The sight of 
it gives him a new idea of the greatness of the kingdom 
and the majesty of Christ's Saviorhood and the glory of 
God. Here, at last, he has seen men really living, and 
he whispers, " This is life, to know Thee, the only true 
God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." 



•..•'■»"- 



IX. 

The Adequacy of this Program. 

THESE, then, are the five demands of the 
Christian program. We see at a glance how 
they supplement each other. No one alone 
is adequate. A life lived on the model of any one by 
itself would be imperfectly human, as well as imper- 
fectly Christian. The harmless life alone would leave 
the world's entrenched evils unassailed. The humane 
life alone would leave man secular and Godless. The 
unworldly life alone would be cold and empty. The 
aggressive life alone would be apt to grow harsh and 
unlovely. The devout life by itself has too frequently 
grown unreal, and even unholy. 

If in one conception, harmlessness, unworldliness, 
humaneness, aggressiveness, and devoutnessare united, 
you have a consistent and adequate Christian program. 
Such a Christian is the true Great Heart, devoted to 
the interest of others, using his sword only to smite 
the wrong and deliver the weak, going through life 
concerned for its higher meanings, and ever looking to 
God, whose he is, and whom he serves. 

There are not a few who claim that our progres- 
34 



The Adequacy of this Program. 35 

sive age has outgrown this ideal. They fail to make 
a common-place distinction between a garment out- 
grown and one simply out of fashion. It is not at all 
uncommon for men and women to lay aside garments 
healthful, strong, modest, and beautiful for those un- 
healthy, weak, immodest, and ugly, because fashions 
have changed. But the old garment was not out- 
grown. The body in it would have been stronger,. 
purer, and more wholesome. 

Contrasting this Christian program with some 
others more fashionable, we may claim that it is not 
outgrown, but only a little out of fashion ; and that a 
life on these lines would be purer, stronger, saner, and 
more effective than a life that follows some of the 
styles much more in vogue. 

Dr. Thos. Chalmers' well known statement is that 
early Methodism was Christianity in earnest. It may 
be safely asserted that whenever the Church begins to 
take its Christianity seriously and sets about its work 
of saving the world for Christ, it takes this for its pro- 
gram and lays increased emphasis on these five prin- 
ciples. It may be safely asserted also, that whenever 
any branch of so-called Methodist Churches drifts 
away from any of these ideals, it ceases to become 
Christianity in Earnest, and ceases to be in the 
broader sense Methodist. 

Dr. Herrick, pastor of Mt. Vernon Congregational 
Church, in Boston, closed his lecture on John Wesley, 
published in his volume on " Some Heretics of Yester- 
day," with the words: "l would all the world were 
Methodist." In the sense in which he used it, so may 



36 The Christian Program. 

every earnest Christian say the same. Not desirous 
at all that all the world should be in the fold of the 
Methodist denominations, yet we may desire that this 
Methodist ideal, because it is the Christian program, 
might be the program of all the world. 



SEP 12 1907 



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